Lecturers to address discrimination, domestic abuse

Two visiting professors will speak on the subjects of gender discrimination and domestic violence next week at the Harquail Theatre.

Verene Shepherd and Dalea Bean will be speaking as part of the University of the West Indies Open Campus’s Roaming Professors Series.

The lecture, organized by the Cayman branch of UWI, in collaboration with the Business and Professional Women’s Club of Grand Cayman and the Cayman National Cultural Foundation, is scheduled to be held Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 6 p.m. at the Harquail Theatre.

Professor Shepherd, the university’s director for the Regional Institute for Gender and Development Studies, has been a member of the UWI faculty in the Department of History since 1988 and is a sought-after speaker on Caribbean history regionally and internationally, according to a press release from organizers.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Philosophy in History from UWI and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. She also holds the title of Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society.

Host of “Talking History” on Jamaica’s Nationwide 90 FM radio station, Professor Shepherd is also a member of the CARICOM Reparations Commission and in 2015 was elected to the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Professor Bean, a lecturer and graduate coordinator at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Regional Coordinating Office at UWI, holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in African and Caribbean History and Political Science, and a Ph.D. in History.

Her general research interests include women and gender justice in Caribbean history, women in conflict situations, and gender relations in the Caribbean hotel industry.

She has conducted gender equity and gender mainstreaming training regionally and has been engaged in research with the Institute for Gender and Development Studies that facilitates gender mainstreaming in education, history writing, and masculinity studies.

The lecture is scheduled to be held Tuesday, Nov. 15, at 6 p.m. at the Harquail Theatre.

According to the speakers, their lecture is informed by the fact that one of the leading forms of violence against women globally, domestic violence, has “increasingly become a critical issue affecting the lives of millions of women, men and families.”

President of Young BPW and member of the BPW Executive Board, Alexandra Bodden, said in the press release that the speakers would be addressing “issues that are of concern to our society, namely domestic violence and gender discrimination. Our mission is to support and empower women in the community so we anticipate having them and look forward to hearing of ways in which we can continue to help our Caymanian women and those in the greater Caribbean.”

Artistic director of the Cayman National Cultural Foundation, Henry Muttoo, said, “Gender discrimination and domestic violence is very much within the scope of our work, since this kind of discrimination can have disastrous effects on the trajectory of cultural development and celebration.”

The free lecture is open to the public.

The lecture comes ahead of the United Nations’ 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence, a global campaign that runs from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10 to raise awareness about violence against women.